ESSAYS

What is the relationship between authenticity and the value of art? Rafe McGregor examines Murray Smith’s latest book Film, Art, and the Third Culture, in order to propose a new form of romantic film-philosophy with reference to Martin Heidegger's theories of death and Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of authenticity.

Has the possibility of a future died? Matt Ossias examines time, history, change and stillness through the prism of Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, with reference to both literature and film, asking can we conceive of a still life that is in some sense still life?

Can grief only be emotionally distressing or can it be redemptive and worthwhile or even vital? Philosopher Michael Cholbi examines the protagonist of Albert Camus’ existentialist novel The Stranger and brings him in dialogue with St. Augustine’s The Confessions, in order to examine the potential of ethical self-knowledge as a consequence of grief.

Does an essential yet still unthought relation between death and language exist? Martijn Buijs turns to the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben to reconstruct his analysis of the voice in relation to death and with reference to both Aristotle and Martin Heidegger, examining along the way being, language and the ethical consequences arising from it.

On what levels can death manifest itself in film? Hamish Ford turns to the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami to unfold the ways in which the quotidian nature of death both explicitly and implicitly determines five of his films, while thereby showing Kiarostami’s celebration of life in all its richness.

Can film transcend its material embodiment beyond celluloid print? John Winn examines Derek Jarman’s audio-visual work Blue (1993), reading it as a transmedial performance rather than a film, while foregrounding corporealities, textures, sounds and voices, thereby opening up the ways in which Blue brings to light questions concerning death.

In a world of rising racism and intolerance could relativism guide us to a better society? Ana Sandoiu explores the philosophy of Richard Rorty, the importance of empathy and the value of a relativism.

What can the work of Mike Kelley teach us about the media landscape of today? Artist and critic John Miller explores Kelley’s manifesto A Stopgap Measure, the rise of Trump and the politics of our over-saturated image culture.

Are our lives saturated with stuff? Philosopher Emrys Westacott questions our seemingly inexhaustible need to acquire more and more stuff, tracing this behaviour back to the dawn of humanity and showing its exploitation by modern capitalism, asking what the relationship between our stuff and our sense of identity is.

Are we confusing objectivity with subjectivity? Do we require more, not less, subjectivity? Philosopher Nicholas Joll presents Theodor Adorno’s take on the difference between objectivity and subjectivity in Minima Moralia, applying it to film, while questioning the implications for evaluating aesthetic judgements in contrast to science.

What was given up in giving up the silence of film, in particular the silence of the city? Echoing Stanley Cavell, Des O’Rawe contemplates Raymond Depardon’s experimental film New York, N.Y. (1985), a film travelling between sound and silence, quietly addressing questions concerning the nature of the photographic medium itself.

How does silence relate to philosophy, nihilism, technology and oppression? Philosopher Brian Schroeder offers a series of reflections on silence distinguishing between the spectacular passivity in the face of the death of God and the openness that allows other voices to emerge.

Can a civilian ever understand the experience of a soldier? Artist Peter Voss-Knude talks to war psychologist Anne Lillelund about the challenges facing soldiers returning from war, the effects of trauma and the importance of the body, whilst reflecting on his own music and practice.

Whereof does it seem impossible to speak? Scholar Darla Crispin turns to Susan Sontag's influential essay 'The Aesthetics of Silence' and her ground-breaking Illness as Metaphor, in order to make audible Sontag's own silent dilemma of her illness, while calling for a new ethics and aesthetics of silence.

What is the relationship between death, silence and the witness? Philosopher David Appelbaum explores the ethical force of silence and our relationship to mortality, tracing the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac in the thought of Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot.

Can we access the plurality of our contemporary world through silence? And to what do the limits of our sonic imagination attest to? Artist and writer Salomé Voegelin re-listens to the body in silence, so as to grant a new agency, whereby she re-positions the relationship between the self and others at the edge of the aesthetic and political.

Have we sacrificed noise for silence? Emilija Talijan turns to Chantal Akerman’s famous work Jeanne Dielman, in order to re-consider Akerman’s formal minimalism not in terms of silence as a 'violence to being', but in terms of noise and rhythm as a compensation for the failure of language, asking what feminist statement can be realised through these modes of presence?

Is silence torture or transcendence? Film scholar Phoebe Pua examines the presence of metaphysical silence in the cinemas of the two great auteurs Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky. Foregrounding essential similarities and differences, Phoebe explores the complex duality of silence and asks whether silence is intrinsically empty or expressive.

Are there vital limits to what we can capture in language? Philosopher Martin Shuster presents a short geographical sketch of the unsayable, drawing on the work of Stanley Cavell, Walter Benjamin and others to explore the connection between silence, humanity and our history.

How can art and poetry encourage existential trajectories that move beyond the nihilism of late-modernity? American philosopher Iain Thomson turns towards the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in order to illustrate nihilism as our deepest historical problem and art as our best response, while establishing Heidegger's insights into postmodernity and technology.

Is there a way out of nihilism's destructive reactivity and anonymity? Philosopher Brian Schroeder argues that play and the liberating freedom of laughter lie at the very heart of the transition from an incapacitating nihilism to an ecstatic nihilism that frees the individual from the spirit of heaviness.

Was Michel Foucault a nihilist? Dominika Partyga turns to Foucault’s early work to explore how nihilism shaped his critique of modern humanism, the tensions it introduced into his thought, and the possibilities he opened up for new forms of truth and affirmation in the modern world.

Are the films of Stanley Kubrick and Michael Haneke entrenched in nihilism? Kevin Stoehr looks at both directors through the lens of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, illustrating just how much we misunderstand these great directors if we don't acknowledge their rejection of nihilism's negative orientation.

Are you a nihilist and should you be one? Philosopher Eugene Thacker turns to Friedrich Nietzsche to break down nihilism into fragments of insights, questions, possible contradictions and sketching it in all its facets, while asking whether nihilism can fulfill itself or always ends up undermining itself?

How is literature a force of resistance? Philosophers Juan Manuel Garrido Wainer and Alexander García Düttmann discuss Alex's recent essay 'The Art of Resistance', exploring the political character of literary fiction, literature as a living force, and the political strength of powerlessness.

What can literature teach us about resistance and how can this lead to politically subversive effects? Examining Maurice Blanchot's remarks on the revolution of May '68 and Michel Foucault's on the Iranian Revolution, Alex Düttmann argues that literary fiction provides insight into one of the strongest forms of defiance.

Does cinema represent or create the world? Christine Jakobson revisits Jean-Luc Godard's famous quote that Robert Bresson's film Au Hasard Balthazar is 'the world in an hour and a half', turning to Stanley Cavell, Martin Heidegger and Mikel Dufrenne to ask: what is the world of a film for?

Why is lying considered to be immoral? From which interpersonal frames do our values arise? James Lewis turns to Michel de Montaigne's short essay On Liars, in order to establish lying's relation to friendship, value and society at large, asking: what exactly is so heinous about the sin of lying?

Does photography have an essence? What is the potential of the photographic image as a form of reflection and future-directed activity? Art theorist Lisa Stein considers the nature of photography in light of the image of Aylan Kurdi, taken up by the UK press in September 2015.